Deadly Reunion (30 page)

Nigel chipped in his twopenn'orth. ‘You want to cut down on the booze, Joseph, if you're trying for a baby.' He slipped his hand in his inside pocket and pulled out a brochure. ‘You want to get yourself some vitamins, too. There's a fine range for would-be daddies. And Milk Thistle's good for raddled livers. It's a new venture of mine. Here, take the brochure. You'll be sure to find something in there to help if you have any problems with the old fertility.'

It was amazing, Rafferty thought as he took the leaflet and stuffed it in his pocket. Trust Nigel to think there could be a profit in his and Abra's hopes for a baby. Was there nothing the man wouldn't look to find the bottom line in?

It seemed not, because as he wandered back to the bar, he noticed several people studying Nigel's cards. Should any of the family decide on a second home in little old England, Nigel wanted to be sure his was the first office they went to. Rafferty had wondered why Nigel had shown his face at the family reunion. Now he knew. He saw it simply as a marketing opportunity.

SIXTEEN

T
he next morning, sore head or not, Rafferty made sure he got up early. He had turned the clock radio up so he'd be sure to hear it when it went off. He rang the station to get the troops mobilized and was out the door in fifteen minutes flat, not even stopping to make Abra her tea. He reviewed everything he had found out last night once his ma and her sharp ears had become lost in the throng and after he'd phoned a couple of the reunees. Everything fitted neatly into his latest theory like a size zero model down a drain hole; even the letter they had found in Adam Ainsley's flat. Admittedly, as with the case against Alice Douglas, it was all circumstantial, but he knew a way to make one of the circumstances stick, at least.

Llewellyn was the first to hear his latest theory. And when Rafferty reached the end of the recitation of it, Llewellyn's usually serious and sallow face looked tinged pink with excitement.

‘I really think you've got it this time.'

‘I have, haven't I?' Rafferty grinned. ‘How many of the team have you ordered to accompany us?'

‘Just two. I think our suspect will come quietly, don't you?'

Rafferty nodded. ‘Oh yes. A well brought up soul like that would do nothing else. Are you all set? Then let's go.'

Rafferty roared out of the car park exit like Lewis Hamilton on speed, causing Llewellyn to grip the dashboard with white-knuckled fingers. ‘Why the rush?' he gritted out through clenched teeth. ‘If he'd wanted to disappear, he'd have done it by now.'

‘Just upping the value of my street cred for the neighbourhood villains.' He eased off the gas. ‘But you're right. There's no point in roaring up his drive and giving him warning enough to slip out the back.' The speedo was now at a nice, sedate, thirty miles an hour. ‘How's that?'

‘Lawful.' Llewellyn let go of the dash and sat back, breathing out on a relieved sigh as he did so.

‘He wasn't my half nephew. He was my son.'

Jeremy Paxton hunched forward over the table as if anxious for Rafferty to understand.

‘I rather guessed that,' said Rafferty. It was an hour later and they were at the police station in one of the interview rooms. He glanced over at the tape to make sure it was still running. He didn't want a technological glitch to miss any of this.

‘You did? How?'

Rafferty was only too pleased to reveal how clever he'd been. How he'd managed to outwit such an intelligent, educated man. ‘It was something your half brother's wife said. The way she spoke of David as ‘my son'. At first I just thought it was the mother punishing her man for not being the father David had needed. She certainly seemed to blame her husband for the lad's suicide, at least in part. But perhaps she was just rubbing salt in the wound of an already festering sore? That in fact David was her son and not his. And then I remembered something else: that David's supposed father never once referred to your half nephew as ‘my son'. It was always by ‘David', his given name. It set me to wondering who might be the boy's father if it wasn't Andrew Paxton. Taken together with one or two other things it set me thinking. It didn't take me long to come up with your name.' Rafferty had threatened an exhumation order on David Paxton, so that he could test out his theory of paternity, but it hadn't been necessary to go so far. He had, anyway, been pretty sure that Jeremy wouldn't want the boy's body disturbed. And so it had proved. Faced with the few pieces of evidence that Rafferty possessed, plus the threat of exhumation, he had quickly admitted his guilt. Indeed, he had seemed almost pleased to have the opportunity to confess.

Rafferty continued his explanation of how clever he'd been at unravelling Jeremy Paxton's murder plot. ‘You sent Adam Ainsley a letter inviting him to the reunion that purported to be a round robin, yet as I've discovered, the other invitations were pretty standard with none of the gush of the letter Ainsley received. You were determined to get him to this reunion, weren't you?'

Jeremy Paxton nodded. ‘I didn't know David was my son until my sister-in-law split up from my half brother, permanently, as she thought and then she told me. I didn't believe her at first, thought she was looking to use me for child support – our affair had ended acrimoniously. But when she reminded me of the dates of our affair and the date of David's birthday, the timings worked out.' His face flamed red for a few seconds. ‘All those years and I never knew. All the years I missed.' He shook his head and his eyes shadowed with sadness and regret. ‘But, even then, I wasn't completely convinced. I think I was scared to believe her, my longing for a son was so great. So, under the pretext of having another chat to her about it, I went round to see my sister-in-law. I didn't even have to sneak into David's bedroom on my way to the bathroom as I had intended as she insisted on taking me up there herself and handing me David's hairbrush so I could help myself to some hairs. She even told me to be sure and get ones with roots attached. She was that convinced that she was right and that David was my son.

‘You can imagine how I felt when the test results came back. I felt so pleased, so proud I thought I would burst. I wanted to contact David immediately and tell him I was his dad, but how could I? His parents' separation had been traumatic. I didn't feel I could just blurt out that his mother and I had had an affair and that the man he had thought of as his father all his life wasn't and that, actually, I was. So I decided to wait a while. Maybe visit more often. Get to know him better. But in the meantime, my half brother moved back in with his wife and they patched up their differences. Then Ainsley got his claws into him and before I even knew about their relationship, before I could let him know about ours, my son was dead.'

Jeremy Paxton bowed his head. When he raised it again, his eyes were damp. ‘I was angry enough that Ainsley had buggered my half nephew and then broken his heart sufficient for the boy to kill himself. But then to learn he'd actually done that to my
son
. The son I've always wanted and never had. The son I'd never had a chance to get to know. The son who killed himself because of that bastard. You bet I wanted revenge. You bet I wanted him dead and not too slowly, either. I knew from Who's Who that he had attended Griffin School and I thought my best opportunity to get close enough to kill him good and slow was through a school reunion. I'd heard on the grapevine that Cedric Barmforth, the old headmaster, was retiring early, so I wrote to the Board of Governors, asking if there would be any teaching vacancies in the new autumn term and was invited to apply for the headship after they'd seen my emailed CV.

‘The competition was fierce, but I was determined to get the post and I did. It helped that the old headmaster, Mr Barmforth, took to me and pushed my name forward with the Board. Anyway, as I said, I got the post. It was when the Board of Governors asked me to take over the organization of the school reunion that I discovered Adam Ainsley had never attended the annual get-togethers and it was important that he attend if I was to give the impression that the reason for his murder was buried in the past. I was stymied for a while, but then I hit on the idea of writing him a very special fan letter, one his ego would make sure he responded to. So I wrote him a very non-standard invitation letter, full of little touches to appeal to his ego. I laid it on a bit thick, but it clearly struck a chord, because he accepted my invitation by return of post.

‘It was then that I started researching the best way to kill him to meet my requirements. It took me a while, but eventually I found out about hemlock and what it does to the limbs. I thought it an apt retribution that the school sporting hero should suffer paralysis – that the legs and arms that had been his friends all his life would become his enemies and prevent him walking out of the wood to the road. Or even – if he somehow managed to crawl his way out and find a phone, that his hands wouldn't be able to punch nine nine nine for help.'

‘Surely he had a mobile?' It was one of the things he had neglected to check, Rafferty now realized. There was always something.

‘Of course. He was the sort of man who would have to have all the latest gadgets, all the boys' toys, to go with his famous name. I took care to check out his room before I went in to lunch that first day and I removed the battery.

‘But I didn't think for a moment that he'd manage to overcome the panic when he found his legs wouldn't do what he wanted. Adam Ainsley was a person who had it easy all his life: all the girls he wanted – which is a bit ironic when you think about it – good looks, sporting success, popularity. But none of it was enough for him. He had to treat my only son so badly that he killed himself.'

‘And what about Sophie Diaz? I suppose she saw you do the hemlock trick?'

‘Yes. I was sorry about that. She told me plainly that she'd hated Ainsley for years. She told me he had humiliated her when they were at school together and that she wasn't sorry he was dead. But she just wanted to know why I had killed him. Funny, she didn't seem to think she was in any danger. I was a respectable headmaster, albeit with poisonous tendencies. But she seemed to have convinced herself that my murderous bent was strictly limited. It would have been, too, but I couldn't risk leaving her alive. I had my family to think of.'

He sat back and stared intently at Rafferty. ‘But Ainsley's dead now. And you know what? Suddenly I don't care any more what happens to me. You can charge me. What are you waiting for?'

‘Nothing.' Rafferty read Paxton the statutory caution for the second time, got up and walked to the door and gestured to the uniform standing outside the door to lead him away. At least this time, unlike at his house earlier, he didn't have to be led past his distraught family, his wife and three young daughters.

But still, he didn't feel good about the arrest. Why was it, he wondered, that, so often in his career, the killer turned out to be a better human being than the victims? With motives for murder that were understandable, maybe even laudable.

He said as much to Llewellyn and got some Latin claptrap back.

But whatever he felt, the case was over now. And he owed Cyrus a big thank you. Without him it would never have occurred to him that Jeremy Paxton would make his way around each table at lunch that first day of the reunion and greet everyone personally – all so that he could get the opportunity to slip the hemlock in Ainsley's meal. It was that and his memory of the discordant way David's parents had spoken of him. It was unsurprising that none of the reunees had thought to mention Jeremy Paxton's personal greetings. After all, they had thought, just like Rafferty, that this murder must be rooted in the past, in their youth spent together at Griffin School. How could the new headmaster figure in such a scenario? Jeremy Paxton didn't even know any of them. What possible reason could he have for wanting to kill Ainsley?

It was seeing Cyrus glad-handing around the tables at the family reunion that made him think outside the box; think that maybe he hadn't been the only one to do a bit of glad-handing at a reunion. And if his ma hadn't organized her own reunion, he might never have got the answer, the same as he would never hear the end of it if Ma ever got to know about it. She'd adopt it as ‘my murder' and for the foreseeable future proclaim to the neighbours that she'd had a big part in its solution. So, once again, to avoid that, he had sworn Cyrus to secrecy. The American was turning out to know more of his secrets than Father Kelly had learned in the confessional in his youth. But, for all of his talk, Cyrus had proved far less of a blabbermouth. And, unlike Nigel, he was confident that this was one cousin who would keep his secrets safe without the need for bribery.